Prepare for a Mobile Holiday

Posted on 9.20.2015

There is yet another study shedding light on how important mobile will be this upcoming holiday season.

The study, by marketing software company SteelHouse, takes a look at data collected from millions of online transactions from approximately 500 US retailers in the last 12 months. The data shows that people spend 82 percent of their mobile time in-app, with just 18 percent of that time spent on the mobile Web. What’s more, in-app marketing campaigns tend to convert at 5 to 10 times the mobile Web rate. Additionally, data shows that dynamic creative increases conversion rates by 69 percent, while ads with video backgrounds and countdown times achieve up to 10 times better performance.

“At SteelHouse, we have the opportunity to analyze millions of data points between our advertisers and their customers. It’s fascinating to see how consumer behavior changes during the holiday period,” said Patrizio Spagnoletto, CMO at Steelhouse. “For example, this holiday season, we’re likely to see consumers using Pinterest more than ever to aid in buying decisions. This is just one of the many insights explained in our guide, and we are happy to share what we learned over the past year.”

Merchants should also expect an uptick in mobile sales on major shopping days this year, as data shows that 26 percent of e-commerce sales came from mobile devices between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday in 2014, which was an increase of 20 percent from the previous year. It is also important to note other trends that the Steelhouse data found, including that 3 out of 4 shoppers will continue to use their mobile device while in a physical store. Moreover, the data found that Pinterest referrals spend two times the amount of Facebook referrals.